The scope comes with some pretty good flip-up lens caps however the lens caps block the bolt's movement with the standard low bases I'm using. I'll use a neoprene scope cover and clearance won't be a problem.

At the Range

Michelle (My wife) shooting my old Marlin 39A octagon barrel 22 rifle while I was sighting in my X-Bolt. This was my first rifle I purchase as a young kid. I earned money mowing my grandparents lawn to get the rifle. It's had many a thousand rounds through it over the years.

Adjustable Objective on the Nikon Monarch 4-16xSF BDC Rifle Scope. One of the main reasons I chose this scope was the generous amount of adjust-ability this scope offers to be able to fine tune the parallax of the range I am shooting at.

View of the side focus adjustable objective knob and the one piece bases and rings.

Caps off the windage and elevation adjustment turrets on the Nikon Monarch 4-16xSF BDC rifle scope.

Tuesday while lying in bed sick with fevers from what I later learned was Strep Throat, I decided I wasn't as happy as I wanted to be with the Bushnell Elite 6500 scope on my X-Bolt. Fevers weren't going to stop me from getting the scope I wanted and I was able to navigate midwayusa.com with my little N810 pocket computer and get a Nikon Monarch 4-16x42SF BDC rifle scope ordered. I had been studying various scopes, features, prices and comparing in hand different scopes pretty extensively over the past week and decided that the Nikon Monarch 4-16x42SF BDC was the rifle scope I wanted for my X-Bolt and the big country I would be hunting with this rifle.

After being completely down for only a few days thanks to a shot from the doc, I made it out to purchase some new bases and rings at the employee store on Thursday. I opted to go with the standard height (low), matte finish set of the lightweight one piece Browning bases and rings that are manufactured by Talley. The scope had also arrived Thursday and I spent some time that night getting the rifle setup to shoot on Saturday.

Friday evening I spent a couple of hours working on mapping where I wanted to sight-in the zero distance of my rifle and achieve the desirable yardages for the additional aiming points in the BDC reticle. I laugh now but I set my rifle up on a table and set out a target through my garage and into the back yard at 50 yards so I could measure the distances between the aiming points in the reticle. I had the aiming points pretty well mapped out calculating the hold over distances and I had drawn up the cross-hair in Illustrator on the computer so I could print it out and place it on my rifle, when I found Nikon's Spot On ballistics program. What an awesome program! Kudos Nikon!

Using Spot On I was quickly able to load my bullet's information and print out various hold over charts and information. I can laugh now but I spent a good couple of hours fiddling with manually figuring out what Nikon has made a breeze. Now in my defense I hadn't really spent any time looking at Nikon's ads or website or I would have already noticed the Spot On information. I had made up my mind to purchase this particular Nikon BDC scope based on looking through one that's in the office for a photo prop.

I decided to sight my rifle in with a 200 yard zero. I normally go with a 300 yard zero, with a two and a half inch point of impact at 100 yards. With the 200 yard zero giving only a one inch high point of impact at 100 yards the fourth aiming circle in the BDC reticle is still an amazing 724 yards at 8,000 ft in elevation, with this flat shooting load.

Download a text file of the 270 WSM 140g Nosler Accubond handload shot from my X-Bolt to be used with Nikon's Spot On ballistic software. Just save the text file on your computer and then on Step 2 in the Spot On software click the "Customize Load..." button then click on the "Open Load" button to find this handload data file.

Journal entries covering general information related to hunting and shooting. Many of these journal entries are from shooting on the rifle or archery range. There are also entries related to my experiences with the 243 WSSM, rifles, optics and other equipment and products I use.